This neighbourhood is located about 5.6 km to the northwest of Astrakhan city centre, along the Astrakhan-Volgograd motorway. It is not far from the city's gas processing plant, thus its first apartment buildings were built here in mid-1980s to provide convenient housing to the plant's workers.
The district is named after Soviet writer Semyon Babayevsky, author of many novels and winner of the Stalin Prize of 1949, 1950 and 1951. His most famous works described the process of restoration of a collective farm severely hit by World War II. The protagonist, war veteran Sergei Tutarinov, champions the recovery of the devastated farm.
Babayevsky is a dormitory residential area with a fast growing population. In 2000, the floor space of local apartment buildings totalled 333,800 square metres, providing housing to 15,800 people.
These numbers have substantially grown since then. Seven more apartment buildings were commissioned here earlier this year. The first group of three nine-storey blocks, built by contractor Investstroy-15, contain 234 one- and two-bedroom apartments with a total floor space of 16,000 square metres. The other four blocks, built by Stroyindustria 2000, have 326 apartments, including studios with separate kitchens, one- and two-bedroom apartments with total floor space exceeding 18,500 square metres.
The following factors will provide a strong impetus to further district development in the next few years:
1. Completion of the first lanes of a non-stop traffic highway across the city. The construction project includes two bridges over the local rivers of Pryamaya and Krivaya Bolda, and an alternative motorway linking Babayevsky with Astrakhan city centre. The new route will cut the time of travelling to the city by half, from 30 to 15 minutes.
2. Beginning of the Zaboldinsky development project, which will involve a recreation area exceeding 2,000 hectares. The project will include a large park, hotels, restaurants, shopping centres and a yacht club.